Alfred Hitchcock Films

The most recognizable American director in the 1960’s. Hitchcock made five films during the decade and broke new ground in the horror genre.

Origins and History

Alfred Hitchcock was born in 1899 in London, England, and began directing films in 1927. He made ten silent films between 1927 and 1929 and fourteen talkies before moving to Hollywood in 1940. He established his reputation in the United States with thrillers such as Rebecca (1940), Suspicion (1941), Lifeboat (1944), and Notorious (1946) and hit his stride as a director in the 1950’s with films such as Rear Window (1954), To Catch a Thief (1956), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Vertigo (1958) and North by Northwest (1959). By the 1960’s, he had become known as the “Master of Suspense” and was widely recognized for his trademark cameos and for the introductions he made for his television series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which ran from 1955 to 1965.

Psycho (1960)

Hitchcock was acutely aware of the marketability of cheap horror films and felt that a high-quality horror film might be even more profitable. Psycho confirmed his belief and contains some of the most infamous scenes of all of Hitchcock’s films. The film opens with Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) embezzling a large sum of money. On the run, she stops at the Bates Motel, where she encounters hotelier and amateur taxidermist Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). In one of the most horrifying scenes in the history of cinema, Marion is stabbed to death while showering. The forty-five second scene was composed from seventy-eight pieces of film. The editing jumps disturbingly from one camera angle to another while the soundtrack shrieks along with the motion of the blade. When Marion’s lover and her sister arrive at the Bates Motel, it is revealed that Norman’s mother is a withered corpse, and Norman has taken on her personality as well as his own. Psycho was filmed in black and white so that Hitchcock could avoid splashing garish red all over the screen, but many viewers were convinced that the film jumped to color for the shower scene. Psycho received mixed reviews from critics, many of whom considered it to be beneath Hitchcock’s talent, but it was a huge success at the box office, and the elements of Psycho the shower scene, the Bates Motel, and the word “psycho” all became part of the cultural lexicon.

The Birds (1963)

Hitchcock returned to the genre of the suspense thriller with The Birds, an apocalyptic vision of nature gone awry. Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) meets Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) in a bird shop in San Francisco and decides to surprise him by delivering a pair of love birds to his home in the quiet coastal town of Bodega Bay. Returning to her car, she is struck by a gull an odd occurrence that puzzles all who witness it. The incident is just the first in a series of escalating attacks that eventually take on epic proportions. The menacing accumulation of gulls and crows and their seemingly random attacks on the citizens of Bodega Bay were filmed with innovative special-effects techniques. The apocalyptic overtones were an attempt on Hitchcock’s part to attract more sophisticated viewers. Many of his loyal viewers were disappointed with the film, confused by the cause of all of the mayhem and disturbed by the grisly images of birds attacking people.

Marnie (1964)

This film is one of Hitchcock’s most uneven projects. The title character is a compulsive thief, and the action uncovers the psychological traumas of her childhood that cause her to steal. Communication between Hitchcock and Tippi Hedren (who plays Marnie) broke down in the course of filming, compromising her performance and his effectiveness. The psychoanalytic structure of the film was a deliberate and somewhat ineffective attempt to please film critics, and the conventional ending an attempt to appease his popular audience. Both audiences gave the film a cool reception.

Torn Curtain (1966)

Hitchcock returned to the espionage thriller format that he had perfected in the 1950’s with Torn Curtain, the story of American physicist Michael Armstrong (Paul Newman) who defects to East Germany and is followed there by his suspicious fiancé (Julie Andrews). Though the film was very similar to Hitchcock films of the 1950’s, it looked old-fashioned and simplistic to audiences who had become accustomed to the fast pace and self-parody of James Bond films such as From Russia with Love.

Topaz (1969)

Hitchcock’s final film of the decade was another espionage thriller. The plot centers around a Soviet intelligence officer who defects to the United States in the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Hitchcock went to great lengths to preempt comparisons to James Bond films, emphasizing the factual basis of the Leon Uris novel from which the script was derived. Though more warmly received than Torn Curtain, Topaz was not significantly more successful.

Impact

Hitchcock’s sense of timing and suspense have been adopted by many directors. Many Americans were afraid of their showers after seeing Psycho and suspicious of crows and gulls after seeing The Birds. The respectability that Hitchcock brought to the horror genre with these films is in part responsible for the American desensitization to images of violence that started in the 1960’s. Hitchcock invented the modern notion of the director as a public figure. His films were defined by complex characters, masterful camera work, and Hitchcock’s superb sense of timing.

Subsequent Events

Hitchcock made only two more films, Frenzy (1972) and Family Plot (1976) before his death in 1980. Though he insisted early in his career that he made films solely to entertain audiences, in the late 1960’s, he launched an effort to redefine himself as a director of cinemagraphic art. By the 1970’s, his reputation as a serious director was firm, and film scholars of the 1970’s and 1980’s found more merit in Marnie and Torn Curtain than the critics and audiences of the 1960’s had.

Additional Information

For a treatment of Hitchcock’s place in the history of cinema, see Hitchcock: The Making of a Reputation (1992), by Robert Kapsis. For studies of Hitchcock’s films, see Hitchcock’s Films Revisited (1989), by Robin Wood, and The Films of Alfred Hitchcock (1993), by David Sterritt. For details on Hitchcock’s life, see Hitch: The Life and Times of Alfred Hitchcock (1981), by John Russell Taylor.